The cutting off precedes the cutting of the cord — Mama isolating herself from the twin connection as a way of managing the impossible situation, of not burdening Lockne with what she was living with, of maintaining the fiction that the problem was local and manageable. Sam dreams because the beach is always present in him, because the boundary between sleep and the other side is thin for a repatriate, because the game uses his dreams to show what he carries below the operational surface.

The isolation Mama chose is the game's counter-argument to its own thesis. Connection is the answer, yes — but the impulse to protect the people you love by disconnecting from them is also real, also human, also a form of care even when it is also a form of damage. Sam has to reconnect Mama and Lockne, which means he has to undo a choice Mama made out of love. The network is built against the resistance of everyone's reasons not to be connected.